by Barb Hendee
Leesil fought to speak, but only two words came out: “Chane . . . orbs . . .”
• • •
Chane’s head felt as if it had split as he struggled up. He knew he was damaged without feeling for the wound at the back of his skull. The cavern dimmed and blurred again and again, and he struggled to keep his feet. Then he realized both of his hands were empty.
There was something long but blurred near his left foot. That glint had to be his older, ground-down blade and not the mottled steel of his dwarven longsword. When he tried to reach down for it, he nearly lost his balance and stopped.
What had happened with the others?
They had heard something, but he had not. Had it tampered with their awareness? Then Ghassan had focused upon Leesil and Ore-Locks, and both had turned away.
Chane had realized then that Ghassan was the traitor among them. But Brot’an had somehow vanished into the skeleton, and there was no one else left able to stop Ghassan.
When Chane lifted his head, Leesil and Ore-Locks were only blurs in the half-light. Before he had hit the wall, both of them had lurched and shuffled strangely toward the cavern’s entrance. He tried to reach again for one of his weapons and heard . . .
“Chane . . . orbs . . .”
He froze and looked. He still could not see Leesil clearly, but it was the half-blood’s voice that he had heard. What about the orbs?
He thought he understood, though it was a deadly ploy.
What if even one orb was taken away? Could Ghassan accomplish anything if that happened? However, any one of the orbs’ presence had always sated Chane’s hunger.
He needed hunger now.
He needed to find a way to call it up.
Chane let himself fall and collapse upon that blur of one sword. As he hunched there, he clawed at it blindly, until he gripped its hilt. He needed to hunt, to feed, and to kill.
Once he had freely reveled in the beast within him—that was him—for the pleasure it had brought. He had given that up, pushed it down, and chained it, in order to be what Wynn might want. Now he had to be that thing—that monster—he never wished to see reflected in her eyes.
And if he did not, and she still lived . . .
Chane loosed the thing chained down for so long within him as he held to only one thought—an orb.
• • •
Khalidah panicked for the first time since the dhampir had rammed his previous host out of an empty manor’s window back in the empire’s capital. The elder assassin had vanished without a trace.
No matter how much Khalidah probed for any presence, he could not find Brot’an. That was impossible. Even though he could not reach Chane’s mind, he could see that one. All he could do was drive the half-blood and dwarf, but even in that, he had to split his awareness a third way to remain sensitive to other mental presences that might reappear in the cavern.
Brot’an was still here—somewhere—and would never flee, so how did he evade detection? How? This fearful, irate wondering cost him.
“Chane . . . get to . . . orbs . . .”
At Leesil’s stuttered whisper, Khalidah exerted his will to silence the half-blood. He glanced aside, looking for Chane. The undead was on his hands and knees, broken and cowering, so Khalidah looked to the dwarf and then to the half-blood again.
Without warning, Chane lunged from the floor, rushing at the half-blood.
Bending Leesil and the dwarf to his will was nothing to Khalidah, and even splitting his awareness a third time to remain aware for Brot’an was only slightly trying. But Chane, his mind hidden though he remained visible, was another matter.
This time, Khalidah would smash that undead to pulp upon stone.
Chane rushed by the half-blood without pause.
Khalidah flinched at that, focused on Chane . . . and inexplicably blinked.
• • •
Ghassan felt Khalidah’s shock as Chane rushed for the chests holding the orbs.
Somewhere in the cavern, the elder assassin hid his presence. As Khalidah split his focus again to fix upon Chane, Ghassan struck out with the last of his near-broken will.
All he needed was an instant of control for a breach of focus—just a blink.
When it happened, torment followed with the specter’s outrage.
You . . . I am done with you! I no longer need even your memories!
Within the prison of his own mind, Ghassan burned as if set afire. In so much sudden pain, he could not even scream, though none would have heard him.
His suffering ended suddenly.
Ghassan floundered in the darkness, but even then, he tried to reach for and hold on to Khalidah’s presence yet again.
• • •
It took but an instant.
At Chane’s lunge and Ghassan’s wayward glance, Brot’an sprang and vaulted the skeleton’s tailbone. He matched every running step to the sound of Chane’s footfalls to mask his approach. In three steps, he reached his target.
There was one strike that might kill quicker than a sorcerer’s thought.
Brot’an wrapped his left arm around Ghassan’s throat as he rammed the stiletto’s tip up into the back of the domin’s skull.
• • •
Leesil saw Chane rush by toward the chests, and then he lurched to a sudden halt. He almost fell forward and for an instant didn’t realize he could move freely. Chane’s distraction had worked, and Leesil knew he needed to act quickly.
He dropped Magiere’s thôrhk, grabbed up both fallen winged blades, and spun, ignoring Chane. Again he stalled.
Ghassan stood with eyes wide and mouth slack, a thick arm around his throat. His own hands gripped tightly to either side of that arm’s elbow, but he didn’t move.
“Chane?” Ore-Locks shouted somewhere to the left. “Chane!”
“Stop him,” Leesil ordered without looking. “Any way you have to.”
Ghassan’s head lurched slightly forward, eyes rolling up under his lids. Behind him stood Brot’an with his other hand hidden behind the domin’s head, and Leesil knew what the elder assassin had done.
It was over for the moment. The traitor among them was dead.
Ghassan’s eyes snapped open, narrowed viciously, and his hands released Brot’an’s arm to thrust up and back for the master assassin’s head.
Leesil charged while cocking back one blade.
• • •
Brot’an suddenly found himself in darkness and silence. He felt numb in thought and flesh, as if he had neither, though he could still somehow look about. Darkness—impenetrable shadow—was everywhere, as if he had sunk into it once more in mind and body.
It had taken the whole world as well.
The cavern, his target, the bones, the others . . . were gone. Never in his long life had he ever been so completely without sound.
“Since you took my flesh, it is only fitting that I take yours.” He heard—felt—something barely perceptible shift in the black void.
Someone stepped out of the surrounding darkness into view: a man. He was smallish, bald, and wizened. His eyes were black, and he wore a simple robe. His face shone with hatred.
As that visage closed on Brot’an, he merely waited . . . until it was close enough. The instant was interrupted as something else took form behind the old one out of the pure darkness. Domin Ghassan il’Sänke rushed in without a sound behind the wizened one.
I know you now . . . all that you are . . . by your own thoughts.
Brot’an heard this, though Ghassan’s mouth never moved. As their gazes locked, the domin silently clamped his hands over the old one’s eyes. As he pulled that bald head back, its mouth opened and its lips curled in a snarl.
“Worm! How did you follow me to new flesh?”
Again, the domin’s mouth did not move. Finish this . . . a
s only you can.
The old one’s hands clamped over the domin’s own. “I am done with you!”
White fire flickered on and within those old hands. It quickly spread into the domin’s.
Ghassan screamed as those flames illuminating nothing else in the dark spread over him, even to his anguished face.
Brot’ân’duivé lunged in. Without realizing he could, he clamped both hands around the old one’s throat. White flame spread onto his own flesh. There was no wound or agony in his life to match this.
Still he tightened his grip.
There was a third shadow beyond that which took mind and body.
Only if spirit remained could one emerge from shadow once more.
This secret was learned—or not—in the first step upon the path of a greimasg’äh, a “shadow-gripper.” Many failed in that moment, which was why so few of them walked among the Anmaglâhk.
Brot’ân’duivé’s agony was only a sign that life still remained. Both would end as he let shadow take his spirit and that of all others with him inside his last shadow.
That Léshil—Léshiârelaohk, “Sorrow-Tear’s Champion”—survived for their people’s sake was all that mattered to the Dog in the Dark.
• • •
Leesil rammed his right blade’s spade into Ghassan’s chest with all of his force and weight. The tip tore through fabric and sank in nearly to his grip as he rammed the other blade in. He wrenched them both out to strike again.
Ghassan crumpled, as did Brot’an, and the first fell across the second, both on their backs.
Leesil dropped atop them, one knee crushing down into the domin’s blood-soaked clothes as he raised his right blade to strike for the throat. He hesitated at the blank eyes staring up at him.
Neither of them blinked—not Ghassan or Brot’an. Both stared up sightlessly into the cavern, their faces slack and expressionless.
Leesil pulled, rolled, and kicked Ghassan’s body off.
“Brot’an?” he whispered, and then louder, “Brot’an!”
The master assassin didn’t move.
“He is gone.”
At that rasp, Leesil twisted on one knee to find Chane—and Ore-Locks—standing behind him.
“I would . . . know,” Chane added, his gaze locked on Brot’an.
Chane didn’t look good. He was shuddering, and his eyes were still colorless. Leesil looked back down.
He didn’t know what to think or feel.
Ghassan had turned on all of them, and there was no knowing how or why. Brot’an didn’t have any new wounds, and yet he was dead. What had just happened?
—Now you are the only one—
Leesil lurched to his feet, instinctively facing the immense horned skull.
—My death . . . no, my freedom . . . means yours as well—
The Enemy was still here, in some way.
Leesil looked everywhere but saw nothing, not even the shadow of an immense coiled serpent or dragon as in the cavern below the six-towered castle. What little light was present led his eyes to Ghassan’s crystal on the cavern floor, likely dropped in the struggle with Brot’an.
He sheathed one blade, grabbed up the crystal, and raised it high, again looking everywhere. Somewhere outside the mountain, the battle went on.
Leesil didn’t want to imagine what had happened to Magiere if this unseen thing could no longer find her. Then he felt a light grip on his arm over the branch lashed onto it.
Ore-Locks uttered a sharp exclamation in his own tongue.
“Wynn?” Chane rasped.
Leesil lurched back, pulling out of that grip, and there was a startled Chuillyon quickly raising his hands. Behind the tall elf stood Wynn, still lightly gripping Chuillyon’s robe as she looked blankly down at the cavern floor. She had her staff in her other hand.
Chap startled Leesil yet again as he came around from behind Chuillyon.
• • •
—Kin . . . treacherous kin of my kin—
Chap froze just short of Leesil as he heard that hiss. Judging from the way Leesil had turned about, he had heard it as well, as had Ore-Locks. Only Chane did not react, and then Chap saw the bodies.
Ghassan and Brot’an both lay unblinking with eyes open. Both looked battered, but only the former was bloodied.
Chap looked to Leesil’s stained blade, and yet there was no time to question whatever had happened here.
Chane rushed around him to Wynn. Though she turned at his movement, she did not—could not—look at him.
There was no time for that either.
—And why do my kin send one of their guard . . . dogs—
That hiss sounded—felt—somehow familiar. By the light from a crystal that Leesil gripped, Chap studied the skeleton. Dead for so long, those bones might have almost melded with the stone if not for their size. He looked up to Leesil.
—Do . . . nothing . . . yet—
“Where’s Magiere?” Leesil asked, quick-stepping in.
“She’s with Osha and Wayfarer,” Wynn answered, though her eyes focused on nothing. “With Shade and the Shé’ith commander also; they hid her away in the foothills.”
—Enough . . . listen!—
At Chap’s sharp demand, Leesil flinched.
“Wynn?” Chane rasped. “What is wrong? Look at me!”
Before Chap could say anything, Wynn reached out, groping for a grip on Chane’s arm.
“Not now,” she told him.
—So, dog, you have power to command the others—
The tone of that hissing, both in Chap’s ears and in his head, was so disdainful. It was also too much like the chorus of whispers when he communed with his kin, and too much like the voices when he had touched the orb of Spirit, though now there was only one voice.
He answered it.
—No—
The voice then filled with rage or panic or both.
—Open the anchors, whelp, or I will summon even more of my servants. And none of your companions, your wards, will ever leave this place—
Chap tilted his head.
—There is no one left to call, or you would have called them . . . called her—
“What’s happening?” Leesil asked. “What did you say to it?”
Chap ignored this distraction. It would not be hard to know to whom the Enemy now spoke, though no one else here could have heard his own answer. No one except perhaps Wynn, and she was wise enough not to let the Enemy know so.
A moment of silence followed, and then . . .
—I can call upon hundreds to hunt you for the rest of your short days . . . and nights. Oh, yes, especially the nights. Even if you are not found, I remain when you are food for worms and then forgotten dust—
That one word—“forgotten”—lingered in Chap’s thoughts.
How much longer than a thousand forgotten years of history had it been since the Fay, the One and the Many, made a world—an existence—to escape nothingness? How many times had all of this happened before, as one of five among those who had sacrificed for the others sought to be free again?
—Why do you sympathize with those who call you deviant? You and I are not so different in that—
“Chap,” Leesil whispered, “what in seven hells is happening?”
“Leesil, shut up!” Wynn warned.
And yet Chap hesitated.
—Order the mixed-blood to open the anchors . . . and free me—
Chap was at a loss. A part of him could feel empathy for the voice, after what his kin had done to him. He no longer believed his losses of memory from his time among his kin had been by his own choice. They had done that to him.
Had they likewise tricked those of their own who had made such a sacrifice for the rest to have an Existence? And still . . .
—No—
At his simple refusal, the hiss became pleading in tone.
—I am weary . . . and wish to be no more—
After all of the hints that Chap had heard and pieced together, he knew the last of that statement was a lie. Destroying the Enemy would mean removing one of what the sages called the Elements from among the other four. To do so would unmake Existence.
Why would it want such a thing?
Chap ground his paws and claws against the cavern floor’s stone. He called upon the element of Earth first, letting it fill him. From there he reached for Water from any moisture in the cavern. Then Air, and then Fire from the heat of his own flesh.
He asked: —Who—what—are you?—
With that single question, he began to burn in blue-white flame as he added his own Spirit. This time, no one would see this, for Wynn was blind.
Chap launched his thoughts into the dark. His self as a Fay broke loose, and the cave around him vanished. In that darkness, weightless and bodiless, he felt it . . . that other timeless presence, so mournful, spiteful, and chained. And through it, he looked back as far as he could and learned much more than he had forced from his kin.
We will create Existence. We will enliven it with Spirit.
Five distinct and separate presences among his kind could be heard: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Spirit. But one of them—Spirit—rebelled, as Chap had in his own way after being born into flesh. It wailed in panic.
Once something is created, there is no power to control it.
Its—Chap’s—kin did not listen.
Existence came to be, time itself formed without beginning or end, and Spirit wailed out again.
Less and less can this be controlled. Undo what we have done.
And again, it was ignored. The other four swarmed upon and subjugated Spirit to “anchor” it among them. Eons passed, a world formed, and the first lives upon it were born.
That which grew and that which moved; that which nourished and that which consumed.
The first tree and the first dragon.
So much later came other forms, and then the Úirishg—elves, dwarves, Séyilf, Chein’âs, and the sea-people were born and spread. From their mingling came humans.
But it—Spirit—the Enemy to be—had escaped in part.